In the healthcare industry, educating patients, and obtaining information from patients, is critical to ensuring patient satisfaction and high quality patient care. For example, many clinical flows require adequately informing the patient (e.g., regarding medical procedures, medical conditions, and/or other matters), gathering information from the patient (e.g., information regarding how the patient feels, demographic information for the patient, health-related habits of the patient, etc.), taking certain actions with respect to the patient (e.g., scheduling a follow-up appointment), and so on.
Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult to provide a patient with relevant information, and to obtain the information needed from the patient. In a typical scenario, for example, a patient receives information during a live, in-person appointment. Alternatively, a patient may receive information during a phone conversation with a live medical professional. These conventional approaches have several drawbacks. For example, the patient may find it difficult to visit his or her doctor's office for various reasons (e.g., work, childcare, etc.), and/or it may be difficult to get a hold of the patient by telephone. Moreover, human error might at times result in the patient not receiving important information. Still further, because there are typically no records of precisely what was said to a patient (e.g., during doctor office visits and telephone calls with the doctor or staff members), liability issues may arise in various contexts, such as whether the patient truly gave “informed consent.”
While healthcare information, or surveys requesting patient information, may at times be electronically provided to patients, the information or questions are typically not customized to the patient or the patient's situation. For example, the patient may simply be provided with an “information dump” that includes everything that may be of relevance, or the patient may be asked to complete an electronic survey that asks a fixed set of questions regardless of whether particular questions are relevant to that patient. These approaches, too, may have significant drawbacks. For example, the patient may be required to wade through an unnecessarily large amount of information and/or number of questions.